


If That Mockingbird Won't Sing

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baby Luke, F/M, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-08-22 07:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16593806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Obi-Wan brings Luke to the Lars homestead only to discover Owen Lars isn't there any more.





	If That Mockingbird Won't Sing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AngelQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelQueen/gifts).



Obi-Wan had never taken much of an interest in the younglings at the Temple. Even as a boy, he'd paid little attention to his fellow children, preferring the company of the older Padawans. By the time Anakin had been dropped into his arms, he was old enough to be interesting, and when Obi-Wan had requested another Padawan learner later, he'd asked for one with a bit of maturity.

He knew nothing about infants.

The infant in his arms fussed and cried, accepting the bottle Obi-Wab gave him with red-faced reluctance. Obi-Wan had privately pledged his own life to keeping this boy safe, and the girl on Alderaan should the time arise for that need. Nevertheless, the sooner he could hand over this baby to Anakin's brother, the better for them all.

Locating the Lars homestead took him two days after his arrival on Tatooine. Luke would be a week old tomorrow, tiny and unaware of the mess the galaxy had fallen into since a few days before his birth. Obi-Wan didn't know how much news traveled out this far. The information he picked up in the settlements he passed through told him little. Everyone out here was more concerned with their own affairs. Another drought. More taxes by the Hutts. Some infection that had passed through the season before. Nothing of galactic politics. Perfect.

He rode out to the homestead at dusk.

He was greeted with a blaster at the door.

"Hello?" he said, stepping back. He couldn't raise his hands without dropping Luke. The woman at the other end of the blaster didn't lower it.

"What do you want?"

He cleared his throat. "Is this the home of Owen Lars?"

The blaster dipped then aimed at his head. "Yes."

"I knew his brother Anakin. Please, I must speak with him."

The blaster stayed steady another long moment before she lowered it. Her face was in shadow by the bright light behind her, but he felt her stab of sorrow. "Don't let on you can speak with the dead. They take a dim view of witchcraft out here." She stepped to one side, allowing him to pass inside, then shut the door.

"I'm sorry," Obi-Wan said. "I'm here with sad news myself. Owen's brother Anakin died a week ago. I came to deliver the news, and this," he said, unwrapping his precious bundle. The woman stared, holding herself distant from him but her eyes fixed on the baby. "This is Anakin's son."

She glanced at him. "Jedi aren't meant to have children. Everyone knows that."

"It was quite a shock to me as well." He could read the other questions in her eyes. "The child's mother died with Anakin. He has no family but Owen."

"And Owen's gone." The words were tight.

Obi-Wan took a long breath. "I'm sorry to have troubled you. I'll take him somewhere."

"Not tonight," she said. "It's sundown. Sand people will be around soon. It's not safe for you, much less for a baby." She gestured. "You should stay the night."

"I couldn't impose."

"You can impose, or you can go out into a desert night and get killed. Did you come all this way for that?" She was sharper than he'd first taken her for, cut to the bone by the endless abrasive sand.

He bent his head in gratitude. "You don't even know my name. Thank you."

"And you haven't asked mine. Beru Lars. Owen was my husband. You're one of Anakin's Jedi friends?"

Friends. They had been friends once. He'd raised Anakin the best he'd known how, and fought by his side in a war with him like a brother, and he'd left him to die in agony.

"Yes. Obi-Wan Kenobi. This is Luke."

Beru looked at Luke again. "There's a crib in the back. He can sleep there tonight."

Obi-Wan started to ask if Beru had other children, but he sensed no one else here. She lived alone and had opened her door to a stranger, even if she'd greeted him with a blaster. No children, but a crib and a dead husband. He'd brought Luke into a house full of lost hopes.

He understood. Some losses were too big for grief.

"Thank you."

* * *

In the morning, Beru fixed them both a thin breakfast. She didn't have anything for Luke, and Obi-Wan was running out of the baby formula he'd bought three planets ago. "The milk's old," she said apologetically. "I used the spoiled milk for cooking. We'll have to go into Anchorhead for baby food."

"I'll pass through there on my way to the spaceport."

Beru said nothing for a long time. "Where are you going to go?"

"Back to Coruscant," he lied easily.

"The holonews said the Jedi are fugitives. You're on the run from the law."

He watched her for a moment. "Yes. I apologize for lying. I didn't want you to concern yourself."

"It's late for that. If you're trying to hide from the authorities, Tatooine is a good choice. No one cares about us out here. The plague came, and the Republic couldn't be bothered to send medicine. The governor even sent word to the Confederacy, asking for help. Nothing."

He felt a continued litany of "I'm sorry" would serve no purpose. "I could stay, I suppose. I can find work and raise Luke here."

"You?"

He shrugged. "He has no family left. I won't leave him at an orphanage. He has no one except me now."

"He has me." She glanced at the baby again. "Owen's family was my family. Anakin's mother was kind to me, and this was her home, too. Luke should grow up knowing who his family was."

Obi-Wan held back his thought that Luke absolutely should not grow up knowing who his family was, but he understood the sentiment. "Are you certain?"

"I wasn't at first, but I've slept on the idea. You should both stay. I've got the room, and if you can work, I could use a farmhand. The pay wouldn't be much." She wasn't one hundred percent certain. Her voice caught and paused. Owen should be here with her, running their farm together. Their child should be sleeping in the crib. She would take the vagabond as a worker, would take this foundling as a child, and she would mourn the loss of things that never were. Obi-Wan read this all in her wide, expressive face.

"It's a generous offer. You may want to withdraw it once you see how bad I am at the job."

* * *

He wasn't as bad at it as he'd feared. Anakin had been gifted with mechanical things, and he'd taught his own Padawan plenty. Obi-Wan had listened in on enough of those lessons to avoid being utterly useless with a vibrospanner. Beru was a patient teacher, trading her own time training him for the payment of his hours. Luke slept during the day, which nearly made the sleepless nights worth it. Obi-Wan was getting used to walking the floor back and forth at midnight, feeding the baby and changing him. What had seemed onerous when he'd first met the boy was now simply another set of tasks to be done, no more difficult than the rest.

To the other homesteaders, good old Ben and his infant son were welcome help for the poor young widow. If they were also the subject of a bit of gossip, Beru said she was used to that.

"It doesn't bother you?" Obi-Wan asked over the dinner he'd made. She was teaching him to cook as well as to work the farm. Tonight's meal had turned out edible, a nice change from the previous two.

"I'd rather know exactly what they're gabbing about me than not know and have to wonder. Does it bother you?"

He considered the question. "No. Jedi aren't meant to have lovers any more than they're meant to have children. If it hides my past, I'm glad. I worry more for your reputation."

"I told you, I don't mind." She lifted Luke from the infant chair where he was learning to sit and hold his head up. "Are you finally ready to eat your dinner, young man?"

The baby's eyes focused on her with a woozy grin. He took a bottle from her more easily than he did from Obi-Wan. He accepted cuddles from his pretend father, but the only mother he'd ever known made his eyes light up every time she held him. As ever, Obi-Wan felt a brief pity. Of anyone he'd ever met, Beru should have a house full of children and a husband she loved at her side. She was making do with a friend and a baby that was no relation of hers. But as she smiled back at Luke, Obi-Wan considered that perhaps, just as the gossip didn't bother her, she didn't mind this substitution as much as she thought she would.

* * *

Luke needed more minding after he learned to walk. Even blocking off large parts of the house left too many dangers to leave him unattended for long. They took turns, spending the hours indoors mending things inside, or cleaning, or making meals, or reading to him, or playing with him. By the age of three, he was reading the stories with them. By four, he could help clean the sand from the floor with a broom.

Obi-Wan's hands cracked, and his skin parched slowly under the unforgiving suns. The hot desert air was stealing the youth from him in long gulps. He saw the same changes come slowly over Beru. No one stayed young here except children.

* * *

Luke was attending nursery school in Anchorhead when the accident happened. It was minor, merely a bad gash instead of a lost leg. He winced as Beru took her sewing kit to his injury, but it was a better fix than nothing, and the bacta patches she taped over the wound would heal the rest.

"Thank you," he said, taking the chance to sit on their one small sofa. "I'll drive to pick up Luke from school. I can't walk around much, but I can mind him until it heals. I'm sure I can cook if I can lean against a chair." He worried. He'd lived here for years. He knew how much each day's work meant to keep the farm running.

"You should rest. You'll heal faster if you don't strain yourself."

"I'm of more use to you active. I'll be fine."

"And no use to me at all if you faint from blood loss. Stay in, drink your water, and focus some Jedi healing on yourself."

The word had become a longstanding joke between them. Everything was Jedi something. When he mended a vaporator, he was using his Jedi mechanical skills. When he made dinner, he was using Jedi cookery. Luke was growing up with the impression "jedi" was another swear word like "kriffing," both of which he was instructed not to use at school. He had no idea the games he played with his father had anything to do with a fallen class of warrior-priests, and he giggled whenever Aunt Beru told them both to get their Jedi butts inside for dinner.

The joke fell flat today. Beru said "faint" in the same tone and with the same worry she would have said "die." She was frightened and didn't want to show it.

"I'll be fine, but if it pleases you, I'll rest today."

She relaxed. "It does please me. I'll fetch Luke and I'll bring us back supper from Tosche Station."

Meals out were a rare treat, reserved for a birthday. "Is there an occasion I'm forgetting?"

She shrugged. "You didn't lose your leg. You didn't die. That's worth celebrating." Again, there were undertones to the light words she used. Obi-Wan considered them with care.

Then he sat back. "You saw the messages."

Caught out, Beru met his eyes. "I didn't mean to pry. They came in when I was expecting a transmission from my sister. I'm sorry for the loss."

Two Jedi had been caught by the Empire. Their faces weren't known to him, only the names he'd seen on the same list of suspected survivors that carried his own name. Over the past six years he had traveled off-world at infrequent times, making contacts who didn't know his true name but who would inform him when they heard news. Two executions wouldn't make the holonews out here.

"I didn't know either one. They had no means of tracking me back here. We're as safe as we can be."

"Are you the last?"

"I don't know. I'd like to believe there are other survivors out there, but I lack a means to contact them, and doing so might endanger us all, especially Luke."

He had never told her the truth about Anakin. She might not care. He'd been Owen's brother, and his stepbrother at that, and she'd only met him once. Luke was safer not knowing, so Obi-Wan kept his own counsel.

Beru checked his injury, nodding to herself. "Then that's settled." He wasn't sure what she meant, and then she kissed him. It was a quick, friendly peck on his lips, her mouth curling as his moustache and beard tickled her. "I'm glad you're going to live."

Then she stood, gathered her traveling cloak, and went out towards the landspeeder to pick up Luke from school. Obi-Wan remained on the sofa, still startled.

She returned a few hours later with a talkative little boy and a sack filled with piping hot food. They ate together, letting Luke fill the conversation with what he'd learned in school, and the games he played with his friends, and what he thought about the holo he'd watched the other day, and a pretend story he'd thought up for his toys. Beru smiled at his tales, asking him leading questions to get him to talk more. She had a gift with him, a talent which Obi-Wan was still learning.

After she sent Luke to bed, she joined Obi-Wan on the sofa. "I'm going to help out tomorrow," he told her. "I promise not to strain myself. I can't sit idle."

"We'll see how you feel," she replied, which was her charitable way of telling him no. "Do you want to sleep out here tonight? You might feel better sleeping upright to keep from rolling over on your leg."

He considered it. "No. If I roll over, it'll teach me not to do that faster."

She helped him to his feet. He was aware of her body pressed against his as she took some of his weight. Beru was made of strength and kindness, taking in a hapless stranger, raising a child that she had no obligation to, running a farm she'd inherited despite every corner of the homestead reminding her of her lost love. They had both suffered losses that would have killed others to bear, but she carried hers with the same grace and fortitude that helped her carry him to the second room that had been his since the night he'd shown up on her doorstep unannounced.

He'd known men and women buoyed with the Force, and great leaders in the galactic political arena. At this moment, Beru was more amazing than any of them.

She helped him onto his bed, and checked his leg again. "We'll pull the bandages in a few days to check the healing, and I'm going to keep checking for fever. If it looks infected, we'll get you to a doctor." Her hand rested warmly against his skin. It had been a very long time since anyone had touched him so tenderly, and only the strict control he'd learned kept his body from reacting. That control did not extend to his breath, which gasped into his lungs with an almost inaudible hiss.

Beru looked at him. For a moment, he thought she would kiss him again. He rather hoped she would. "Ben?"

"The leg is a bit sore," he said.

She looked at his face for a long moment. "I could stay. To keep you from jostling it in the night."

There was no disguising what she was really asking him, only a shallow leaf to cover. Jedi weren't meant to have lovers, but if he was the last, there was no one to judge him for it except himself.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "I," he paused, "I wouldn't want to impose."

"You can impose," she said, "or we can continue the way things are. We've got a good life together. I'd like to make it better." She did kiss him again then, and this was not a friendly peck. He could push her away, tell her this was something a Jedi could not do, could not be, and she would accept it, but she had made her own intentions clear.

He didn't push her away.

"Then I would like you to stay," he said, whispering the words into her mouth before kissing her once more.

They did jostle his leg. He didn't mind.

* * *

They took Beru's former name together when they went in front of the local magistrate. She had only been a Lars when she'd been Owen's wife, and he'd dropped his own birth name to hide years ago. The magistrate signed the document to change Luke's name at the same time, and in a single day, there were three new Whitesuns.

By the age of seven, Luke had stopped calling Beru his aunt and referred to her as his mom. By eight, he had a little brother, and by nine, a little sister. Obi-Wan watched him dote on the pair with the same wide-eyed attention Beru had paid to him when they'd first arrived. Even as he gently unwrapped pieces of Luke's past, telling him abridged stories about his birth parents, he reminded Luke every day how much he was loved by the parents who were raising him. He helped out with the farm, and practiced his extra lessons with his dad, and every day he was full of smiles.

The homestead was often full of smiles these days, even on the nights when the younger ones got each other to start crying in the nursery that had once been Obi-Wan's room. He swept in to soothe them, holding one as Beru rocked the other.

"You hold your Jedi butt still," Obi-Wan overheard Luke say to his baby brother as he was helping tug on a shirt. Beru joined him outside the room in time to hear, and she covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed and laughed.


End file.
